Development Lessons

With countries around the world undergoing reorganization after wars, nonviolent revolutions and, in the Sudan, a vote to split apart, the Catholic Church’s example for development holds valuable lessons. So said the economist Paul Collier in an address on Feb. 15 to the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington. Collier, the author of The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, has been urging that developing countries follow the church’s example in providing basic services to the poor. What the Catholic Church has known for at least a century, he said, is that "what makes people committed to their work is not primarily financial incentives, it’s internalizing the objectives of the organization.”